Originally Posted by FriendlyPilot

No. This is wrong. All of the costs of flying are put in CASM. But the revenue from redeeming credit card miles are in "other revenue" which is NOT part of RASM. There is no accurate way to pull those costs out, so they get rolled in. If you removed the costs of transporting people from cards, you still have a profit. Also if you included the card revenue in revenue, then RASM is more than CASM. If the credit card deals disappeared completely, costs would be much lower and legacies would still be profitable.

This is even disclosed in the SEC filed earnings report and explained in all of them. You should actually read them if you want to understand instead of talking to random pilots or click-bait articles designed to get clicks and earn clickthrough ad revenue.

I know you're going to continue to believe what you want because it suits you, but what I explained is how it works. It also makes no sense that airlines like Spirit, Frontier, Allegiant that need "scale" to compete with large airlines have been profitable in the past without scale, but the actual airlines with not only scale but premium revenue someone lose money but then their scale doesn't mean anything and its all credit card revenue. If it makes you feel better then you can keep saying it.